Topic: lateral occipital cortex

When we look at a dolphin we see grey skin, a long body, and fins – visual features that are typical for fish. Yet we know that dolphins are mammals. How does the brain learn these exceptions? To elucidate this question, we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging study (fMRI) using a categorization learning task. Across five blocks, participants learned to sort stimuli into two classes depending on their color compositions while undergoing 3 Tesla fMRI scanning. In the two sets, we also presented stimuli that shared most of their features with the respective other group (exceptions).